1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a computer-implemented system and method for user activity and user preference data analysis in a multi-user, multi-location environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Certain digital environments may bring together multiple users of varying experience levels and skill. The users may congregate in multiple locations, with clusters of users at each location that are engaged with each other. The users often participate in a common activity, which might progress through one or more rounds. Although the activity is common to the users, each user may be self-interested and seeking to advance his or her position within the environment.
Within those environments, less experienced players may not be as well-versed in the intricacies of the environment and, as such, may be at a disadvantage as compared to when dealing with users of similar experience levels. For purposes of this application, less experienced players may be referred to as “novices,” and more experienced players may be referred to as “experts,” although it should be appreciated that the focus should be more on the experience disparity than on an actual experience level of the users.
Experts may increase their odds against novices if there are fewer other users at the location at the same time or if the expert does not have to engage with other users until a novice shows up. As such, an expert may reserve a position within a location with few or no other users and then become idle, waiting for the novices to show up.
Alternatively, an expert may passively monitor a location to determine the types of users that participate there. The expert then may target a location where one or more novices previously were and where he or she expects additional novices to join in the future. For example, novices may tend to be more risk averse and, therefore, may favor locations that are lower risk, lower reward, with the belief that they are joined by other novices. This assumption may be flawed, however, by the presence of experts, who may skew the experience level against the novices. Thus, a novice's small losses may add up over time to a substantial transfer to the experts.
Over time, these losses may tend to wear on the novices, diminishing their desire to return and thereby decreasing the overall population of users, diminishing an overall collection for the system.
At the same time, the system may host hundreds or thousands of users at hundreds or thousands of locations. In a computer-implemented environment, these locations may be hosted on multiple servers, which also may be located in different physical places. Each of these factors may contribute to making it impossible for an administrator to actively monitor all digital locations at all times.
What are needed are a system and method that seek to overcome one or more of the drawbacks described above.